Reimage Software
Heberto Calderon
I have a 4-5 year old PC running Windows XP for software development at work. It struggles to run all development tools I need at the same time. Management feels I need to reimage my computer to "speed it up". The last time it was imaged was about 3 years ago.
UPDATE:I just wanted to add that the PC runs 1-2 programs (SQL Management Studio and Visual Studio 2008) just fine, but having more programs open (say Outlook or Chrome) significantly brings down the performance. It's obvious to me that the machines are old and outdated. They have never been upgraded as far as I know.
Update #2:Further description of the situation: the PC isn't cluttered with toolbars, plugins, and/or widgets from the web. The startup folder is empty, every single program that is installed, is used for development. It is not a play computer, every program has it's purpose/use.
So, for the PCs/workstations out there that is used properly for work/development, what evidence/resources out there point to support/debunk that reimaging a work PC actually makes it faster? If management's plan is to do this for every single PC that is 'slow', is it really worth the time? Imagine there's not just 1, but 10, 50, 100, or even 500 PCs that are like this. Obviously it's impossible to say that every PC install is squeaky clean already or is only used for 'work'. Maybe then, reimaging is the default thing to do as a first step before replacing the PC?
The LifeHacker article you linked links to another article which goes into more detail about how to mitigate the dreaded WinRot. All of the tips it gives are 100% valid, and I leverage every single one of them daily.
For example, I'm typing this from inside a virtual machine that hosts my web browser, for security segmentation's sake -- additionally, I can install whatever questionable applications in this or another virtual machine sandbox, so as to not clutter up my host machine.
However, these tips are only really useful if you've been following them all along (with the exception of the CCleaner plug, that thing is always useful.) A well-used Windows desktop machine will invariably have some junk piling up in the Registry and elsewhere, and a reformat, coupled with the adoption of proper app installation routines, will hugely mitigate WinRot. [citation needed] :P
Re-imaging a pc puts the PC back into the state in which you created the image. At that point, you probably had a somewhat fresh PC, with little, if any, spyware or bloatware. As time progresses, and you surf more and more websites, install more software, and put more things into your startup programs, the system begins to slow down.
So yes your PC will seem to run faster after re-imaging it, but that's because you wiped your startup programs, and other bloatware out up until the point where you created your image. Less programs to run usually equals less time to run them, giving you the illusion that your PC is running faster.
Hello. The ones that already have the key ImageInfo have probably already run a reimage task.
Is it possible that the one that are not applicable for the reimage baseline have a newer version of OS than the image to be installed? Thanks.
I figured out why the baseline was not applicable even though the relevance checked out. It was a rookie mistake on my part. It turns out, I placed the baseline in a site where some of my devices were not subscribed. After subscribing them to the site, they became applicable.
The password is definitely not something we can provide to the end user. Also, while apps, users and other data were erased (expected), the BES Client directory in C:\Program Files (x86)\BigFix Enterprise was preserved - I see logs from the past week. It would actually be preferable if the BES Client can be reinstalled during this process. I want to clear all existing computer settings from these devices and I think I can use the reinstall to set the secure registration password. Do you or anyone else know how this can be done with the reimage baseline?
Hello Jriv,
your scenario is not clear to me but if I correctly understand and you want the client to run an action that auto-reset itself, the only possibility that I see is to send an action that writes and runs a script that does the job, this because, once stopped, the client will not be able anymore to receive commands but the script (a batch or vbs for example) can continue its execution up to completion. By the way this is unrelated to the OS deployment that must be completed with the same client identity that started it, and preserved during the installation, or the action will not be marked as complete.
Thanks.
We need to start again with the original ubuntu install. We could delete the vm and create a new one, but this is tedious, easy to get the wrong settings, and also gets a new IP when we have already whitelisted and setup DNS for the old ip, and also setup the AZure firewall settings for this server.
I also understand that for an expert it is possible to separate the ip, config and firewall settings and apply them to a new server, and know how to clean these up when the server is no longer needed, but we are looking for a "reimage" button or feature which most other hostings have (e.g. linode, vpscity). This would save potentially days of time for us.
I have some ASA 5506-X without Firepower, that I want to make use of. However, I first need to reimage the appliances. Cisco guides that I have found so far, do show the processes of ASA 5506-X with Firepower module only. Can someone guide me on how to apply the reimage the process of ASA 5506-X without firepower module ?
The information I have right now is only that, its an ASA5506-X and that we need to reimage them to ASA, latest version it supports. However they also noted that they want the configuration set from scratch. They noted specifically that they do not have the Firepower module on these appliances.
Taking this information into consideration, for me to prepare, I stared to look for the guides on this ASA 5506-X model without the Firepower Module, but Cisco documentation and Google Blogs were pointing me to the Reimage process with Firepower module, all the time. Thus got confused.
My first attempt to setup xg home failed. I registered successfully, did the setup wizard, and then lost access to the web ui. I then reimaged the box to start over. Of course my license is now orphaned. I tried to figure out how to detach it on the Sophos website. I couldn't find anything. How do I reclaim my license so I can reactivate the same machine?
if you have reinstalled XG using the same image (I mean HW, SW, Virtual), after the installation use the same Activation Code and you will use the same license. You have to follow the same steps you did at the first instance.
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As you may already know I am working with Cisco Firepower on a daily basis. Not just the new and shiny Firepower 2100, Firepower 4100 or Firepower 9300 but also the older NGIPS appliances from when the Sourcefire mindset were more visible.
Recently I was asked to help with a complete reimage (per my request not "just" an upgrade from version 5.4.0.8 to 6.2.0.2) of some FMC4000's in high availability and a few FP8350 sensors. To be honest I do find these black appliances quite sexy when doing what they do best - inline operations.
All of these steps should be taken on every FMC and every sensor as well, and sometimes they fail, taking more time to complete the task. Even though this process is very consultant "friendly", meaning that many hours can be billed to the customer, I recommended that we reinstalled everything and rebuild the rules manually.
All I needed was a few files from the Cisco Support website. The restore image, the patch and the most recent rule updates. These are the files in a random folder on my Mac. I followed the reimaging process in this guide.
At this time I could fire up the restore process and use the install files via a connected ethernet cable directly to my laptop. See pictures of this process by scrolling down to the FMC reinstallation part. The files were downloaded as expected and the restore process began.
Now the update of the NFE firmware began. No additional lines were outputted in over 30 minutes. I started sweating and I was about to pull the power cable multiple times in the 30 minutes, but luckily I did not. Out of a sudden it completed...
On "page one" in the Firepower Configuration Guide it states that the FMC must always be the one with the highest software version. This is because the FMC has backwards compatibility with older versions of sensors, but not the other way around. TAC will tell you the same story if you try to file a bug with an unsupported setup. This meant that I followed this order of operations:
The process began and the appliance successfully installed. The below picture is from the first FMC that I put in production after reinstalling. Everything (Patch, SRU,VDB and Geo) was updated before deploying the policies.
About: Dennis Perto is an enthusiastic security consultant who places great honour in genuinely humble consulting. He believes in serving the client with expert knowledge, and in not being afraid to admit when he is not the right expert anymore. He enjoys configuring Cisco Firepower for every special need.
When updating an instance in a Virtual Machine Scale Set, there are some changes that can't be applied to existing instances without performing a reimage. Reimaging a virtual machine in a Virtual Machine Scale Set replaces the old OS disk with a new OS disk. This allows changes to the OS, data disk profile (such as admin username and password), and custom data to be applied. To reimage a set of existing instances in a scale set, you must individually reimage each instance.
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